November 23, 2012.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Motshabi Hoaeane.

Making headlines:

Professor Jonathan Jansen says that the South African education crisis is a threat to democracy.

The Department of Transport says the e-tolling bill hasn’t been withdrawn in Parliament just postponed.

And, the National Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Report points a finger at Eskom.

University of the Free State vice chancellor Professor Jonathan Jansen says that the country's democracy will implode within ten years if the crisis in education is not immediately fixed.

He said, at the Helen Suzman Foundation public lecture, that the World Economic Forum's report on the state of education globally, where South Africa's education system was ranked as one of the worst in the world, should be a major concern. South Africa ranked 133 out of 142 countries surveyed.

Jansen said that violent strikes on the mines and on farms in the Western Cape were because the education system had failed young people, the majority of whom were black. He also compared the government's approach to the need to improve maths in schools as the same as that under apartheid.

He said that schools compensated poor teaching of mathematics with a poor and less challenging subject such as maths literacy. He also noted that the loser was always the pupil, who realized too late that their dream of studying engineering or accounting at university had been thwarted as they didn’t qualify based on the school subject called maths literacy.

The Department of Transport says that the e-tolling bill hasn’t been withdrawn in Parliament.

Department spokesperson Tiyani Rikhotso said that the portfolio committee had held its public hearings and was due to bring the matter before Parliament.

Rikhotso said that while the South African National Roads Agency Limited was ready to implement e-tolling by the end of this year, Transport Minister Ben Martins felt it was important to allow "the parliamentary process to run its course".

He also said that any issue that relates to legislation would need to be concluded before the department could go ahead with the implementation of e-tolling.

According to the latest National Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Report, South African power supplier Eskom is breaking more environmental laws than any other state corporation. It also reveals that the National Prosecuting Authority cannot, under current legislation, prosecute the utility in this regard.

The Green Scorpions found problems at the utility's Lethabo power station in the Free State, its Matimba power station in Limpopo, and the Camden power station in Mpumalanga.

The report says that Eskom remains the organ of state with the highest rate of non-compliance with environmental legislation. The environmental non-compliance included, among other things, exceeding the emission limits set, lack of monitoring and reporting greenhouse gases annually, as well as "significant non-compliances to conditions of authorisation"

Eskom said it had yet to study the document, and that it had "a range of programmes in place across the organisation to ensure that it complied with environmental legislation.

Also making headlines:

The Democratic Alliance has filed an urgent appeal in the Constitutional Court as the motion of no-confidence debate is rejected by the Western Cape High Court.

The South African Reserve Bank leaves the repo rate unchanged at 5% owing to a deterioration in the inflation outlook.

And, the ANC tables new changes to the contentious Protection of State Information Bill.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.